Archive for the ‘New Releases’ Category

SFPA Grandmaster Poet Bruce Boston brings together 29 poems surreal and about surrealism. Along with seven poems appearing here for the first time, Surrealities includes reprints from leading genre and literary publications such as Chiaroscuro, Dreams and Nightmares, Paper Crow, The Pedestal Magazine, and Strange Horizons. Also includes six original and striking Rorschach illustrations Boston has created specially for this collection.

“At times furious in its assault on the senses. At times curious in its nonchalance. This vein of poetics suits Boston oh so well. Like when he takes flight from a straight narrative thread and employs his vocabulary to high and exigent purposes, as in ‘The Lateral Eclipse of Bound Sunsets.’ And when he makes the mystery melancholy, as in ‘Stray Acquisitions.’ A master class on the motive/emotive powers of language.” –-Robert Frazier, author of The Daily Chernobyl

“Boston utterly transcends convention, highlighting many aspects of human experience inaccessible through the use of more traditional methods. Reading these poems is like embarking upon a trek through ‘the depths of dreams,’ the ‘infrastructure’ of the soul itself! I celebrate the release of this work, a collection to which I shall, no doubt, frequently return.” –-John Amen, author of At the Threshold of Alchemy

Meet the vampiress Annchuck who first saw night in 1990′s out-of-print chapbook TOWERS OF DARKNESS, Max Schreck (with a nod, too, to Bela Lugosi), “Guillemette” (née Mina Murray), Nadja, Nikki, a modern Medusa, a tourist who meets up with “Cape Man” in France (“… he had a tendency to change the subject when I asked him what he did. Eurotrash, I suppose”), a competitive runner who races the sun, a baseball fan who dotes on night games, a modern Carmilla who also likes jazz, a future version of Kipling’s vampire (“a rag and a bone and a hank of hair”), and many more in VAMPS (A RETROSPECTIVE), 75 poems, approximately a third of which are here for the first time, in an 84-page trade paperback with illustrations by Marge B. Simon for less than the price of a modest pizza.

Aleric Toma Bimbai is a two-hundred-year old Gypsy who hunts monsters for bounty. His task this time, however, is to save a zombie rather than exterminate it. But Wasso Wonko is no ordinary zombie. He can still think. He can talk. Besides, Wasso is Gypsy.

In his search for answers Aleric uncovers a sinister plot that threatens the very existence of his people. He will have to go up against the self-proclaimed King of the Gypsies and test his reputation of being unkillable.

Multiplex Fandango is subtitled “A Weston Ochse Reader” for good reason. This collection contains a comprehensive representation of short fiction and novellas by the Bram Stoker award winner and Pushcart Prize nominee, including his recent powerful Stoker finalist short story, “The Crossing Of Aldo Rey” and his brilliant Stoker finalist novella, Redemption Roadshow, as well as acclaimed favorites, “Catfish Gods” and “Big Rock Candy Mountain”.

Also included in this omnibus volume of sixteen short stories and novellas are six original new works of short fiction written especially for this collection including such future classics as “Tarzan Doesn’t Live Here Anymore”, “Low Men Weeping”, and the stunning, “City Of Joy”.

Table of Contents:
MULTIPLEX FANDANGO – a pop-culture, theatrical, book presentation of the works of Weston Ochse on Sixteen High-Definition literary screens.

“This is a book that could almost have been written for me.” – Joe R. Lansdale

“Ochse builds a “multiplex” of 16 stories (six original to this volume) for his impressively diverse first collection. Horror fans will be drawn in by Ochse’s cool, collected writing style and then blown away when he peels back reality’s skin to uncover the supernatural terrors lurking just beneath the surface.” – Publisher’s Weekly

‘Weston Ochse is a mercurial writer, one of those depressingly talented people who are good at whatever they turn their hand to. Multiplex Fandango is as wild as the title suggests. It is at times infuriating, complex, moving and bananas. Above all, it is very, very good.’ -Conrad Williams, August Derleth and International Horror Guild Award Winner

Revised for this special eBook edition, Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished is the most comprehensive review of the Stephen King works you’ve never read, including coverage of nearly one hundred unpublished and uncollected works of fiction — novels, short stories, screenplays, and poems!

Best of all, it features the first book publication of two lost works written by King, including an entire chapter from King’s unpublished 1970 novel Sword in the Darkness that has never been published anywhere in the world!

Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished also gives in-depth coverage to the nearly one hundred variations and versions of King’s published stories — edits, updates, and changes King made between reprintings of his work. This is a must-have for both collectors and casual readers of Stephen King!

As popular and influential as Bram Stoker’s classic tale of nocturnal menace is, this 1897 novel did not invent vampire fiction, nor was it alone in feeding the Gothic fantasies of the Victorian period.

IDW Publishing presents an expertly selected menu of outstanding vampire stories that either informed or benefited from Bram Stoker’s hugely popular creation. These eerie tales of the undead – some 22 in all – form the core cannon of classic vampire literature. Chosen and introduced by celebrated literary scholar and author Leslie S. Klinger (The New Annotated Dracula), with illustrations by an array of noted horror artists, In the Shadow of Dracula brings to adventuresome readers stories of nocturnal terror that have lived in Stoker’s shadow for too long.

Authors include M.R. James, Algernon Blackwood, and Bram Stoker himself. Included are what’s considered the first true vampire story 1816, as well the classic novella Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu, the first vampire tale with a lesbian theme (it’s been adapted to comics and film several times), and “The Family of the Vourdalak” by Aleksei Tolstoy (he’s the cousin of the famous one), which gave Boris Karloff one of his greatest roles.

Step into a world of darkness where nothing is as it seems. Meet a woman who has been exorcised of a demon, but cannot live without him, so she invited him back into her live. Learn how far a mother will go to reunite with her estranged son. Visit a ghost town that struggles to return to life. Find out what strange things happen on Wysocki street. Ghosts, demons, murder and more await you in Clock Strikes Two and Other Stories.

It started as a dream—a redheaded warrior king fought and died for his men centuries ago. The dream would lead archaeologist Annja Creed to the king’s undisturbed corpse…and one of England’s greatest mythical artifacts.

Deep in an archaeological dig in England’s Midlands, Annja locates a braided necklace around a mummified king’s neck. Made of an unusual material—not quite obsidian, but gleaming with multihued color—the torc is an astonishing find. But someone knows exactly what the torc means. And he will do anything to get his hands on the Tear of the Gods. When the dig is compromised and innocent archaeologists are slain, even Annja herself is left for dead. Now she is fleeing for her life, not knowing the terrifying truth about the relic she risks everything to protect—or the devastating consequences should it fall into the wrong hands….

In Jim Butcher’s “Curses” Harry Dresden investigates how to lift a curse laid by the Fair Folk on the Chicago Cubs. In Patricia Briggs’ “Fairy Gifts,” a vampire is called home by magic to save the Fae who freed him from a dark curse. In Melissa Marr’s “Guns for the Dead,” the newly dead Frankie Lee seeks a job in the afterlife on the wrong side of the law. In Holly Black’s “Noble Rot,” a dying rock star discovers that the young woman who brings him food every day has some strange appetites of her own.

Featuring original stories from 20 authors, this dark, captivating, fabulous and fantastical collection is not to be missed!

Table of Contents:

Curses by Jim Butcher
How the Pooka Came To New York City by Delia Sherman
On the Slide by Richard Bowes
The Duke of Riverside by Ellen Kushner
Oblivion by Calvin Klein by Christopher Fowler
Fairy Gifts by Patricia Briggs
Picking up the Pieces by Pat Cadigan
Underbridge by Peter S. Beagle
Priced To Sell by Naomi Novik
The Bricks of Gelecek by Matthew Kressel
Weston Walks by Kit Reed
The Projected Girl by Lavie Tidhar
The Way Station by Nathan Ballingrud
Guns for the Dead by Melissa Marr
And Go Like This by John Crowley
Noble Rot by Holly Black
Daddy Long Legs of the Evening by Jeffrey Ford
The Skinny Girl by Lucius Shepard
The Colliers’ Venus by Caitlín R. Kiernan
King Pole, Gallows Pole, Bottle Tree by Elizabeth Bear

Datlow (Digital Domains) adds to her already lengthy list of impressive anthology credits with this compilation of 20 original stories from some of the best-known names in urban fantasy. For newbies, her short but informative intro clearly lays out the boundaries of these works, which combine “the often-dark edge of city living with enticing worlds of magic.” Jim Butcher’s “Curses,” a humorous short story linked to his Dresden Files series, is a nice change of pace from his increasingly grim novels. Ellen Kushner’s “The Duke of Riverside” gives the origins of the romance between Alec and St. Vier, heroes of her novel Swordspoint. Lavie Tidhar’s “The Projected Girl,” set in Haifa, Israel, features a boy’s search for the truth behind a legendary magic trick. Other notable contributors include Lucius Shepard, Patricia Briggs, and Melissa Marr. –Publishers Weekly

This anthology of short fiction affords a superb sampling of urban fantasy, that popular sf/fantasy subgenre defined in the book’s introduction (which, in all of three pages, is a welcome and helpful, to say nothing of articulate, definition of this subgenre) as a combination of the “often-dark edge of city living with enticing worlds of magic”—with an urban landscape being absolutely crucial to the story. To put it another way (as also expressed in the introduction, that is), “where the story takes place should matter, in some way, to the story.” –Booklist starred review

Naked City definitely contains some of the best urban fantasy stories which I have had the pleasure of reading in a long while, and I fully expect that this anthology will be showing up in the nomination lists for next year’s round of awards. –The Green Man Review

Exiled exorcist Lucian Negru deserted his lover in Hell in exchange for saving his sister Catarina’s soul, but Catarina doesn’t want salvation. She wants Lucian to help her fulfill her dark covenant with the Fallen Angels by using his power to open the Hell Gates. Catarina intends to lead the Fallen’s hordes out of Hell and into the parallel dimension of Woerld, Heaven’s front line of defense between Earth and Hell.

When Lucian refuses to help his sister, she imprisons and cripples him, but Lucian learns that Rachael, the lover he betrayed and abandoned in Hell, is dying from a demonic possession. Determined to rescue Rachael from the demon he unleashed on her soul, Lucian flees his sister, but Catarina’s wrath isn’t so easy to escape. In the end, she will force him once more to choose between losing Rachael or opening the Hell Gates so the Fallen’s hordes may overrun Earth, their last obstacle before reaching Heaven’s Gates.

“In her debut novel, Miserere: An Autumn Tale, Teresa Frohock has succeeded at creating that all-too-rare phenomenon among first-time story-tellers: a mature prose style combined with a fully realized vision. Her ‘woerld’ will completely immerse the reader with its compelling and striking visuals, fascinating details and thrilling plot turns. The book is almost impossible to put down and it’s harder yet not to actually believe that what Ms. Frohock imagined isn’t terribly real—even if some of us haven’t found an entrée into the parallel existences she’s meticulously crafted. Studded with magic, demons, and terror run amok, dark fantasy and horror fans alike will walk away from Miserere feeling they’ve found a writer they not only admire, but are anxious to revisit soon in her future works.” — Lisa Mannetti, Bram Stoker Award-Winning author of The Gentling Box and Deathwatch

“Miserere is about redemption, and the triumph of our best impulses over our worst. It’s also about swords, monsters, chases, ghosts, magic, court intrigues and battles to the death. It’s also (and this is the important part) really, really good.” –Alex Bledsoe, author of Dark Jenny and The Sword-Edged Blonde